Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-ARGENTINA: 21st Century Boom in Tango Clubs

Viviana Alonso

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 8 2003 (IPS) - The mushrooming of milongas or tango clubs in the Argentine capital demonstrates the resurgence of interest in this traditional urban music and dance rhythm of the Rio de la Plata region – Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay – both locally and abroad.

Tourists from Europe, the United States and Japan flock to Buenos Aires with one aim – to dance tango until they drop.

Dance halls, old-time cafes and neighbourhood dance clubs host the milongas of the 21st century, which have their own modern websites and e-mail addresses, although they go by traditional names like El Abrazo, El Beso, Pasional or Las Morochas.

The new milongas have brought renewed meaning and life to run-down buildings and dance halls, many of which were headed towards certain demolition, such as the La Ideal confectionery.

Built in 1912, La Ideal is a majestic building with marble staircases and columns that was frequented by Hipólito Irigoyen, president of Argentina from 1916 to 1922 and 1928 to 1930, Eva Duarte (Evita), the wife of legendary former president Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955), and socialist leader Alfredo Palacios.

El Abrazo, the first of the nearly 100 milongas that can be found all over Buenos Aires today, emerged in La Ideal in 1997.

The entrance fee to most of the dance clubs is less than two dollars, although a few offer more refined services and shows, and cost just over three dollars. Similar fees are charged for the dance classes offered throughout the day.

But the neighbourhood dance clubs, some of which have been around for over a century, and which kept tango alive, are a different story.

One of these is the Sin Rumbo club, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Villa Urquiza. The club is known as the Cathedral of Tango, and produced many famous tango dancers, like the almost mythical Ovidio Bianquet, also known as "El Cachafaz", and his companion, Carmen Calderón, who at the age of 97 still dances.

Well-known dancers like "Luis Lemo, María Nieves, and Juan Carlos Copes y Mayoral also came through here," said Alfredo Ruiz, who is known as "Titi", even by the foreign diplomats he teaches how to dance tango.

Ruiz, who dances several times a week in Sin Rumbo as well as performing in other clubs, was familiar with the old-time milongas or neighbourhood clubs, many of which are long gone, and can compare them with the modern-day milongas.

There is "a difference in style between the tango danced in the neighbourhood clubs, which is more traditional and more elaborate, and the style you see in the milongas in downtown Buenos Aires, which is generally easier for beginners, or for the foreigners who come to learn or practice," he told IPS.

Many foreigners come to Buenos Aires only for tango, especially Europeans – mainly Germans, French, and Finnish – and Japanese.

These "cult" visitors do not travel outside of Buenos Aires, and their entire stay centres around visits to the milongas.

The presence of foreigners often produces clashes of dance styles as well as misunderstandings arising from cultural differences and the lack of familiarity with the subtle codes, and that gives a different feeling to the modern-day milongas.

But that is not the only difference. "Forty years ago you went into a milonga and 80 or 90 of the 100 men there were good dancers who competed with each other to see who took the most steps, who invented something new, but that doesn’t happen today," said Ruiz.

But some aspects of the milonga culture have survived virtually unchanged through the years, like the importance of eye contact and body language, and the clearly defined roles assigned to men and women.

It is the men who invite the women to dance, and they do so with their gaze, rather than words, while the woman accepts with a subtle nod or a tiny smile.

The choice of dance partner is generally based on skill. Some talented dancers basically discriminate, refusing to dance with beginners or with clumsy or graceless partners. In fact, that is one of the most frequent complaints by those who visit the milongas and spend hours as wall flowers, watching others dance.

In the world of the milonga, social class becomes irrelevant, and the powerful and handsome can be turned down, while the least-favoured can be kings or queens, as long as they have style and magic dancing feet.

On the wood or tile dance floors, men and women accept situations of rejection that they would not tolerate in other spheres of their life, as well as close physical contact between strangers, which would normally be out of place.

Ruiz pointed out that tango is the common denominator of the old and the new milongas, and the attraction that continues to draw Buenos Aires residents – known as porteños – and foreigners to the dance halls.

"It is magical, it is dancing an embrace," he said with feeling. "Above and beyond the timing and the technique that tango demands, it is three minutes of passionate dancing."